Did someone tip off the powerful Ocean County Republican chairman, George Gilmore, to the biggest corruption bust in New Jersey history?

A paragraph buried deep in an FBI document recently made public suggests Gilmore knew about the coming raid, although Gilmore says he was just repeating rumors — a well-known phenomenon in New Jersey politics.

In a September 2009 interview with the FBI, Al Santoro — a former executive director of the Ocean County Democrats, who pleaded guilty to taking bribes — recounted an exchange with Gilmore.

“Santoro advised that approximately one week prior to the July 23, 2009, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raids, he was told by Gilmore that there was going to be a lot of arrests north of the Raritan,” an FBI summary of the interview says. “Gilmore did not provide any more details and did not say who told him.”

The document was one of several made public after former Assemblyman Lou Manzo sued the U.S. Attorney’s Office, claiming discriminatory prosecution.

Gilmore’s organization is credited with boosting turnout in heavily Republican Ocean County to help elect Chris Christie governor. And it was Christie who initiated the investigation that led to 46 arrests.

Gilmore told The Auditor he had heard rumors of a raid, but not from Christie or anyone in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“All I know is what I was told. ... There was going to be a whole bunch of indictments,” Gilmore said. “I got no inside information. I didn’t talk to any law enforcement official of any type with regard to that. Someone had mentioned it to me and I just said it as an aside.”

When a Christie spokesman, Michael Drewniak, was asked if his boss, no longer U.S. attorney when the raid came, knew it was coming and, if so, did he tip off Gilmore, he said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Absolutely no and no.”

Wedding bells

It’s no surprise a who’s who of senior advisers and staffers attended the June 16 wedding of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, to Jamie Loftus, a former Port Authority bigwig.

And yes, Christie’s presence was also felt.

Maria Comella, communications director for the governor, and Bill Baroni, deputy executive director of the Port Authority, watched Rhoades and Loftus tie the knot in her upstate New York hometown. They danced to a George Harrison tune at the Skaneateles Country Club reception. Comella, who grew up outside Albany, met Loftus on President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, and they worked together on Sarah Palin’s ill-fated vice presidential bid.

Romney was prepping for an appearance on “Face the Nation” and couldn’t make the festivities. Skaneateles will have to wait.

What goes around comes around

Drewniak was quick to defend his boss in the wake of a three-part series in the New York Times about abuses at the state’s halfway houses, many run by Community Education Centers, and escapes from the facilities. In a statement, Drewniak praised the company’s “unbroken 18-year contract history and growth in the New Jersey halfway house business spanning six governors.”

But in 1997, when Drewniak covered the Corrections Department for The Star-Ledger, he wrote a front-page article about John Clancy, the chairman and chief executive of Community Education, and how he set up two companies to keep the money flowing while complying with the state’s bidding laws:

“Everything’s going John Clancy’s way.

“He has cornered the market in a New Jersey growth industry and will soon be grossing $66,000 a day from the state. To comply with state regulations and tax laws, he has intertwined two companies so money taken in by the nonprofit one is passed through to the for-profit. Clancy is president of both.

“Better still, he’s had no real competition.

“His booming business? Prisoners.”

Drewniak declined to comment.

There’s a doctor in the House

David Rosen, the chief budget officer in the Office of Legislative Services, was the target of a Christie harangue after saying the governor’s revenue projections were too optimistic.

The fallout? Democrats now make a point of calling him “Dr. Rosen” to emphasize that he has a doctorate in political science. Take Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), the budget committee chair, who told reporters recently that “Dr. Rosen even believes his numbers may be too optimistic.”

Not that Democrats are the first to do this. Rosen heard himself referred to as “doctor” in 1997, when he challenged Gov. Christie Whitman’s infamous pension bond deal. It was then-state Sen. Robert Littell, the Republican budget chairman and opponent of the deal, who puffed up Rosen.

For the record, Rosen is a humble and meticulously polite guy, and irritates governors of both parties in roughly equal proportions.

“I have never used the title, either in writing or in speaking,” he told The Auditor. “But I have been unable to squelch it. It went viral before things went viral.”